More VIVO RECORDS releases___________________________________________________________

MERZBOW
BLOODY SEA CD
vivo2006022CD

 

Protest-Noise music by Masami Akita.
Dedicated to anti-whaling activity. 50m. 27s.

1. Anti-Whaling Song Part. 1
MP3
2. Anti-Whaling Song Part. 2
MP3
3. Anti-Whaling Song Part. 3
MP3
       .
All Music by Masami Akita

MA-prepared acoustic guitar,handmade instruments,EMS synthi 'A', computer & various effects.
Recorded & Mixed at Bedroom, Tokyo, April 2006
http://www.merzbow.net

 


SOLD OUT
 
 



In November, 2006 , the Japanese whaling fleet will set sail for the icy waters of Antarctica. Their target - 50 Humpback Whales, 50 Fin Whales and almost l000 Minke Whales.

In the next l6 years, unless this obscene ' scientific whaling ' program, known as JARPA 2, is stopped, the Japanese whaling fleet will slaughter l7,000 Minke Whales, 800 Humpbacks and 800 Fin Whales.

The murder of these beautiful creatures spells the end of the global moratorium on the killing of whales as Japan's so-called 'scientific whaling' is nothing more than a commercial killing operation. The Japanese Government subsidises its whaling industry with thousands of dollars each year.

Japanese warehouses are piled high with mountains of unused whale meat. School children are given whale hamburgers and sausages in an attempt to turn them on to eating whale meat. The truth is that the market for whale meat in Japan is almost non-existent. Yet still the Japanese Government pursues its deadly agenda of turning the world's oceans into a slaughterhouse for whales.

Old whalers who worked in Antarctica in the fifties, when thousands and thousands of whales were killed, cannot wipe the memories of the hideous slaughter from their minds.
They say that whales suffer terribly, unable to lose consciousness until the moment of death.

Whales cry, whales struggle to protect their young, their kin. As the dreadful harpoon with its grenade head explodes as it pierces living flesh, their agony is unendurable. In the last whaling season just passed in Antarctica, Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd reported that whales were deliberately drowned by Japanese whalers.

Sometimes, the whalers use electric probes. Blood pours into the ocean as the whales thrash in agony. In some cases the chase and death take hours. Every minute must feel like a lifetime.

At the International Whaling Commission (IWC) where many nations of the world meet each year to haggle over whether whales will be killed or not, the global moratorium on the commercial killing of whales which has held of whaling nations for 20 years is close to ending.

The IWC has no powers of enforcement. It has no navy. The IWC has no way to stop countries like Japan, Norway and Iceland from killing whales . In the past, the US government has threatened trade sanctions against these countries, and the threat has been reasonably effective.

When George Bush became President of the United States, the world's only super power and the strongest ally of the whales, changed its policy. Japan has been able to get away with murder because the Bush Administration has turned its back on the whales so that the world's oceans can be raped in the name of free trade.

The balance of power in the IWC has now changed. Japan has bribed poor and undeveloped countries with massive aid money to obtain their vote at the IWC. The anti whaling nations, USA, UK, Australia and New Zealand have done little more than make media statements and diplomatic protests.

Environmental groups have obtained legal opinions from some of the best legal experts in the western world. It is very apparent that Japan's obscene whaling program could be stopped in various international courts.

But no nation will take Japan to court because the anti whaling nations are members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and they will not jeopardize free trade. So the equation is quite simple - whales or trade. Unfortunately, trade is winning the game unless the people of the world rise up and protest against this deadly trade-off.

Oceans without whales are hard to imagine. But the grim reality is that there is no whale population, no whale species that is capable of withstanding slaughter. Millions of whales were killed in the last two centuries, their deaths creating profound impacts on marine ecosystems.

Many people ask why Japan persists in killing whales when there is no market for the meat. Japan is the world's greatest exploiter of the global marines. The Japanese appetite for fish, insatiable. Many conservation groups believe that if Japan is forced to stop whaling, the Japanese government believes that their fishing practices will soon be exposed to global scrutiny and their fishers forced to cut back.

It is also true that most Japanese people are completely unaware of the extent of whaling by their government, or the appalling cruelty involved - or the global protest as the Japanese media does not report on the killing orgies.

If commercial whaling begins again in the 21st Century, humanity will have taken a giant step backwards to the Dark Ages. People find it hard to believe that the fight to save the whales has begun again, and that unless there is massive global protest, the whales will die.

In buying this CD, you have made your statement of concern for the magnificent, highly intelligent whales. It is not enough. You must write to your politicians, to the religious leaders in your country, to newspapers and to radio and television stations making your protest.

Tell your family, friends, workmates that the whales will die unless we, the people act.
There is legal action which can be taken to stop the slaughter. There is hope. Miracles can happen, but we must create the magic.

The whales demand no less. The great mind in the waters is calling on caring humans to ensure their survival.

This call is nothing less than the crossroads of our humanity, our survival.

Do it !
/ Sue Arnold /

australiansforanimals.org


special thanks to:
David Head
stopwhaling.co.nz
Ron Hunter
whaledive.net

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  REVIEWS


THE WIRE
(...) Merzbow is of course the archetypal super-productive noise generator, and Bloody Sea ties his ferocious torrent of abused, imploding and exploding electronics to a topical protest - the imminent relaunch of the Japanese whaling fleet. The three parts of "Anti-Whaling Song" explore a familiar syntax of pounding low-end pulse with howls of speaker-shredding sound damage unleashed on top. The theme and content set each other off well: Merzbow's seething sounds and furies are a suitably bloody apocalyptic froth for the brutalities described in the sleevenotes.



www.clubber.pl
Cios między oczy wprost z japońskiego undergroundu. Ten album to protest przeciwko masowemu zabijaniu wielorybów, których mięso Japończycy wcinają tak jak my schabowe. Muzykę przygotował sam guru noise elektroniki. Akita nie cacka się ze słuchaczami i nokautuje trójfazowo. Piski, zgrzyty, sprzężenia, ryki, świdrujące na wysokich częstotliwościach sygnały układają się w dźwiękowy horror. Album tylko dla śmiałków, ale tak smutny i krwawy temat nie mógł mieć innej oprawy muzycznej. Nie ma litości, tak jak litości nie mają ci, którzy polują na te wyjątkowe zwierzęta. "Bloody Sea" być może zwróci uwagę świata na ten dramatyczny problem. Robert Moczydłowski



MUSIQUEMACHINE
Bloody sea comes off like a more approachable, less violent version of the four disk Turmeric set from early this year. using elements of guitar feedback and electronic pluses and some very crude rhythmic elements.

On offer here are three tracks Anti- whaleing soung parts one through to three. All of the tracks to a certain extent have an improvised feel, none of them except the shortest track two staying in one places structurally very long, they seems as if there are cut up elements of a larger noise jam, Masami cutting the best bits out and offering them here. Track tow pumps out a wonderful Geiger counter, like loop through out its running time, as Merzbow splatters and burns guitar and static elements on top. The air seems very fiery and denser, almost boiling with anger in parts. This I think is due to the subject matter, it's nice to see Merzbow making really doing what is modern protest music here. The cd comes in a rather nice cardboard folder, with a frankly depressing/ anger inducing write up about Japan's restarting of whaleling.

Certainly  not a Merzbow releases for the novices to his work or noise virgins for that matter, but a competent  and rewarding release, that follows on nicely from his recent investigation back into analogue sound link with digital equipment. To hear some samples and buy direct go here.
Roger Batty


DE:BUG
Merzbow - Bloody Sea Vivo
Bloody Sea - Stop Whaling! schreit uns vom Cover entgegen. Wahrscheinlich das direkteste und barmherzigste Bekennerschreiben der zeitgenössischen Noisemusik. Im Klappcover finden sich harte und äußerst üble Fakten zu begangenen und kommenden Greueltaten und der geringen Überlebenschance der Wale. Obendrein eine CD mit drei Anti-Whaling Songs, die brachial und ohne zu Zögern alle Wut über die Dummheit der Menschen ausspeit, die grundlos jeden und alles dem ekelerregenden free trade unterordnen müssen. Schwachsinnige Politk (hier: Japan, Finnland, Island) verlangt nach harter Opposition, auch in der Musik. Masami Akita steht ganz vorne und schreit wie ein vergessener Gott nach deiner Position im sog. Spiel der Weltmächte, die immerzu meinen, in allen Bereichen den Noise ausklammern zu müssen, um die grandios überbewertete Kontrolle zu behalten - selbst über Leichen. Auf jetzt, CD bestellen und dann ab zu stopwhaling.co.nz
http://www.vivo.pl
ed *****


VITAL
This is a time where external events slide by as glib advertisements, as Baudrillard remarked - there was no gulf war. We only had signifiers. There was no signified - by which I mean can anyone say why we went to war - without even declaring a war? The politician/corporate executive via overwhelming technological power, media subversion and staggering wealth is able to inflict devastation on a global scale. All of their actions in reality are destructive of life, truth and morality. Their texts, their whole culture - justifications, motivations, philosophies even! are only placed to take our attention away from their actual actions. A farmer through the sights of an infra red missile is a terrorist, humans and animals are political-exploitative opportunities and media foci - not anymore even useful commodities, third world famine an opportunity to not feed the world, but feed the pockets and egos of pseudo-political media personalities.. (and Noise is the nihilistic rejection of all this..) We have come along way from Gericault's raft of the medusa, we have even come along way from Gurnica and the ambiguity of The Weeping Woman- or the blatant hiding of the horrors of 1914-18 through a screen of an iridescent mist of water lilies. It was the artist Schwitters and now his Japanese doppelganger who refused both the exploitation of inhumanity, or a refusal to acknowledge it in an art as opium for the people. After all people are not treated by Merzbow as sheep -but as free moral agents with which the artist can engage in a dialogue, in which the artist's work is more than an opiate or merchandizing opportunity but a commitment to the idea of community which has to engage in ethical frameworks of cooperation and consideration of all life. Art cannot divorce itself from morality for as Wittgenstein stated- ethics and aesthetics are one and the same. (jliat)

 

http://www.merzbow.net